“The police have rights like anyone else.” – Vince Canales, President of Maryland’s Fraternal Order of Police
If that were so, few would object. You wouldn’t hear a peep out of me. The problem is that instead of ‘rights like anyone else,’ police have come to have privileges like medieval barons.
A set of due-process rights for police officers under internal investigation for alleged misconduct, Maryland’s LEOBoR [Law Enforcement Officer Bill of Rights] includes a provision that the officers cannot be forced to make any statements for 10 days after the incident, during which time they are presumed to be searching for a lawyer. It is partly because of this “cooling-off period” — to critics, a convenient delay for the cops to tidy up their stories — that so little has been said by the only people who know what took place within that vehicle.
The standard LEOBoR also provides that an officer may only be questioned for a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with plenty of breaks for food and water.
Samuel Walker, an expert on law-enforcement accountability whose research has focused on the LEOBoR, says that this “special layer of due process” afforded to police officers “impedes accountability, and truly is a key element of our lack of responsiveness to these cases” of apparent excessive force.
As described, the Maryland LEOBoR is actually a mild example of the breed. By the time police unions, benevolent organizations and mandated arbitration get through with the supposed process a police officer becomes virtually immune to serious discipline, as one report after another has exhaustively documented. Hell, when a cop can beat a woman on video at a public event and keep his job, it’s not really all that hard to get the idea that cops don’t merely have ‘rights like anyone else.’
And the ‘investigation’ processes that have grown up to bury every questionable thing any cop might ever do bring nothing like credibility to their claims. One is reminded of last year’s very famous ‘unarmed black man’ shooting, in which in the fullness of time it began to appear that maybe Darren Wilson was perfectly justified in shooting Michael Brown. But by the time evidence to that effect was provided, cops and prosecutors at every level in the whole sad matter had piled so much obfuscation on the whole thing that the skeptical among us can be forgiven for doubting every bit of it. If it was a clean shoot, fine. Then it was. So why hide the evidence?
Which is not to condone the things going on in the news lately. I’ve searched my copy of Rules for Radicals and looting convenience stores doesn’t seem to appear there in the list of methods for fighting official injustice. Maybe it’s in the appendix somewhere. Looking at news items coming out Baltimore, this seems to me like one of those conflicts where it’s a shame both sides can’t lose.
Then maybe the rest of us could be permitted to get on with our lives. Naw…that wouldn’t work. There’s still Hillary to be dealt with.
“Looking at news items coming out Baltimore, this seems to me like one of those conflicts where it’s a shame both sides can’t lose.”
That’s about the best comment so far on the whole sorry mess.
I dont want to be a hater…. but the entire police culture is as screwed up in some ways as the gun owner culture.
As a gun owner it should be our responsibility to throw the irresponsible under the bus.
Carry when you’re drinking (where not allowed), yeah no defense, under the bus, you knew better.
Brandishing? Yeah sorry. Under the bus you go.
negligent discharge? “fingering it in the stall”? Yep, under the bus.
But we dont do we? No, the majority of us defend them. Accidents happen, mistakes can be made, etc.
Both gun culter and police culture need to adopt the same cultural policies. Dont defend those who treat that status with callous disregard. It demeans everyone otherwise.
Abnormalist, you lost me. Can you show me a single example of a ‘gun culter’ defending careless gun use? I’ll bet you a bottle of cheap bourbon that for every (agreed genuine) one you find I can find five examples of negligent shooters being dragged through the coals by complete strangers. Hell, I can probably do it without leaving Youtube.
Here’s one right here.
“a provision that the officers cannot be forced to make any statements for 10 days after the incident”
But you and I as a common citizen cannot be forced to ever make a statement.
“an officer may only be questioned for a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators”
But you and I can refuse to even be questioned period!
I am all in favor of holding police accountable for their actions and there are legitimate things we can do to fix this problem. That is what we should work on.
RE: “As a gun owner it should be our responsibility to throw the irresponsible under the bus.”
As a citizen you should report law breaking. Simple as that. No special reason to concentrate on guns owners. If no law is broken, then mind your own business.
Seriously? You don’t believe there should be a difference between a citizen arrested and accused of a crime and a cop who beats or shoots someone on the job?
How about this? In every job I ever had, if my boss came to me and asked “Why did you do that,” whether “that” was good or bad, I absolutely owed him an explanation for my actions. Right then, right there. Calling my union rep or an arbitration officer – had I ever had access to such a thing, which I never did – would not have gone well for me. And I have never been called upon to beat or shoot someone in the course of my business. I was just fixing cars, or teaching people how to fix cars, or writing manuals or training aids about fixing cars. But I was still held absolutely responsible for my actions, every minute. I never once believed it should be any other way.
So what the hell makes cops such special snowflakes? Greater power, greater responsibility. If you can’t handle that, you really shouldn’t have the badge.
“But you and I as a common citizen cannot be forced to ever make a statement.”
Let’s see. I shoot a guy who is minding his own business. If I’m not a cop, I go to jail for a long time. If I’m a cop, the whole system works to exonerate me, including lying and the fabricating evidence that is never punished even if it is discovered. In fact if I lie to a cop I go to jail, but if I lie as a cop it’s just part of my job.
Yeah, right, cops have it much tougher than the rest of us.
http://www.constitution.org/lrev/roots/cops.htm
I absolutely think any cop who murders someone or beats them should face justice and not get to hide behind the badge. But forcing them to make statements; NO! Let the DA do his job. If they are guilty then convict them. But unless you haven’t been paying attention most of the recent shootings of blacks have been highly politicized and the police and civilians who shot were treated to mob justice and conviction by the news media. I want just the facts not the politics of race to convict.